A helpful user drew my attention to the desirability of adding a small but important feature for dissertation students – namely, the ability to leave the percentage symbol off the numbers in the percentage columns of frequency and cross tabulation report tables. This new feature will be in the forthcoming version of SOFA (1.1.4):
Here is the feedback from Doug:
For dissertation writing in the States, Turabian 7th edition and the Chicago Manual of Style 6th edition are standard for many graduate schools on both the masters and the doctoral level. In both cases, tables with percentage figures in them do NOT have percent signs in front of the numbers themselves, because a typical title like “Table 3. % of babies born to men over 40” already tells you what’s inside the table.
Sofa Stats, however, so far as I can see, requires that percentages have the percent sign, which then gets dragged-and-dropped into Word (or Excel, for tidying up first). If the table is a small one, and if there are only one or two, no problem. But many dissertations have tons of them.
There is a way to rid a table of the % signs by using Excel, but it’s awkward and not a part of the regular menu system. I just worked it out myself a few hours ago, after spending half a day on the problem.
What would be *extremely* helpful to graduate students, whom I assume you would like to have as one of your key user groups, would be for you to program in a “switch” that would allow the user to specify percentages with or without percent signs. It’s a small detail, but one that would be much appreciated.
I generally try to avoid adding more features to SOFA in favour of keeping it simple but this seemed a good idea. Thanks again for the feedback Doug.